BEVERAGES: A Beer with a Mouse Chaser

A Beer with a Mouse Chaser

James Harvey should have quit while he was ahead. The unemployed Jacksonville construction worker was offered $1,500 by the Adolph Coors Co. last July after he claimed to have discovered a dead mouse in a 16-oz. can of the firm's beer. Harvey refused, demanding as much as $50,000 compensation for being subjected to an unexpected drinking companion.

Deciding that enough was enough, Coors balked, and the state of Florida has filed extortion and consumer-product-tampering charges against Harvey. Exhibit A: tests showing that while the sealed beer can left Coors months earlier, the mouse itself had been dead for only a week...